Smaller hotel rooms

New York's flourishing Yotel scene

EXPERIENCED business travellers know the deal with New York City and its hotels: if you want to stay in Manhattan, and you don't want to sleep in a dirty room or kip on someone's sofa, you should be prepared to pay—a lot. The same goes for other big, expensive cities like Moscow, London and, of course, Tokyo.

Now the New York Timesreports that, in New York at least, hoteliers are increasingly embracing a trend close to your correspondent's heart—the smaller, cheaper hotel room. After all, in the modern world, who needs all the space you get in a classicly sized hotel room? For many business travellers, a hotel room is just a place to sleep and shower. The bathroom doesn't need to be huge. And since almost all of us have laptops now, we can work sitting up in bed. Ditch the desk, the mini-kitchen, and the extra table and chair. We're not using them anyway. Save the big rooms and the extended-stay amenities for people who are actually making extended stays. Finally, the industry seems to be listening. Here's the Times:

The latest iteration [of the small hotel room], which appeared first in Europe, offers a complete hotel room, typically under 100 square feet and usually with a private bathroom. These hotels first appeared at Europe's airports, and some rent rooms hourly, enabling passengers on stopovers to nap, shower and rejuvenate.

The first entry in New York was the 345-room Pod Hotel on East 51st Street in Midtown East, which opened in early 2007 with room rates that started at $89 a night.

Last year, a competitor appeared: the 669-room Yotel at West 42nd Street on the Far West Side, with an introductory rate of $149 a night.

The developer of the Pod, BD Hotels, said that it would open another in Manhattan, the 366-room Pod 39 on East 39th Street in Murray Hill, sometime this month.

Prices of $89 a night for a clean room in Manhattan with a private bathroom are almost unheard of; indeed, even $200 a night (the actual average daily rate at the New York Yotel) sounds like a pretty good deal for mid-town Manhattan. So far, it seems as if business travellers are embracing this trend—the Manhattan Yotel had a gross operating profit of 50% its first 11 months, the hotel chain's CEO told the Times. If you want to see more innovative business ideas like this, reward the innovators: give staying in a smaller room a shot. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it can be—and how much thicker your wallet is at the end of your stay.

Where real estate prices dwarf even Manhattan, the Japanese have pioneered tiny Capsule Hotels.

They are pre-fabricated modules that have self contained Lighting, Heating/Air conditioning, Music, Video Entertainment, flat screen, Wi-fi, computer, and sleeping quarters. They are stacked like bunk beds and constructed like modular Legos. You climb the integrated ladders to get to your cube. They are quickly assembled on site. There needs to be separate site provided community restrooms, showers, kitchens, and central group social area.

But we all need a separate private area that is warm, safe and secure to retreat to. It does not have to be a penthouse 500 sq m studio with granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances and gas fireplace.

They are cheaper than any standard hotel, motel, or student hostel. And they can be hygienic with impermeable plastic materials and sterilized for the next guest.

A warehouse can be reconfigured to house stacked units that are as space efficient for human architecture. Utilitarian but cheap. And good enough for city living short visits. We eat and celebrate elsewhere in vast public spaces. Go to sleep in our cubicle for the night. If you need the space to swing a cat, go outside. It is as livable as submariners who can go a year without surfacing.

It is as futuristic as space travel in Alien. Your own personal sleep capsule that leads to the future(Tomorrow).

When everyone starts using these pod-sized hotel rooms, guess what? The price goes up and the room size stays down. I am writing this from a 'no frills' business hotel in Basel, Switzerland - no porter at door, no Q-tip in bathroom, no bathtub... a la early Holiday Inn Express. It's 600 US a night.
Working from home is the only way.

”The same goes for other big, expensive cities like Moscow, London and, of course, Tokyo. ”
Obviously, Gulliver has completely forgotten the existence of "Capsule Hotels" in Tokyo, that can be used for less than 4,000 yen per night even in Central Tokyo. It was only THIS January that the Economist ran an article about it in the print edition:

"... and, of course, Tokyo"? Tokyo (and any other large city in Japan) has plenty of "business hotels" offering small single rooms with bathrooms for B&B rates of around $100 per night (including free internet). Many of them have English web sites offering on-line booking. Get a twin room at the same hotels and you will get much more space for, perhaps, 50% more, which may be sensible for overseas visitors on long stays, but for 1-2 nights without too much luggage the basic offering is fine. It is perhaps no coincidence that many Japanese companies do not reimburse hotel costs on an "as-incurred" basis, but as a nightly rate - and many Japanese business travellers will prefer to spend less on the room and have more to spend on the evening out. Capsule hotels are an extreme case of this, but offer fewer beds in total.

I think there's definitely a huge market for a class of hotel somewhere between a hostel and a standard business hotel unit. As a single late 20's traveler, I don't mind doing as the natives do and truly "living in the city" and not in the room.

I‘m not impressed—the Affinia line of hotels in the Murray Hill area have rooms that are 300-500 sq.ft. going for $200-$400, depending on dates (weeknights are more expensive, though not by a lot). I’ve stayed in three, and they’ve all been fine.

I am reading this post as I sit in one of these postage size hotel room in Nantes, France. My overall assessment is mixed. This room is small. My guess is 80 sq. ft. - more or less. I am here with my wife, so it isn't as comfortable as we would like. The room has modern touches - uncomfortable chairs and a glass bathroom door. We are not here by choice. Our preferred choice was fully booked. At times size does matter and, when it comes to hotel rooms, the larger the better.

I'd like to agree that the trend now in hotel industry is to sell the rooms by the hour, even without sacrificing the size and amenities of the rooms as nowadays even luxury hotels are doing this selling strategy. Many booking portals are exclusively offering hourly rates for decent & luxe hotels like dayguest.com and hourlyroom.com, dayuse.com, etc.